Scottish Lib Dems target 150 seats at next council election

The Scottish Liberal Democrats have set a target of winning more than 150 seats at the next council elections.

The party secured 87 seats in May but leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has already identified his goal for 2027.

Mr Cole-Hamilton, who became leader last August, will outline his ambition later at the party’s rearranged autumn conference in Hamilton.

He is expected to tell delegates: “We’ve identified the wards, we just need people to fill them.”

Mr Cole-Hamilton said the strategy was called 150 Rising.

He will say: “Rising, because 150 council seats is just the floor of our ambition.

“As new candidates emerge, as people hear our message, as we build that social contract, our ambitions will rise with our polls.

“I’m tired of fighting elections based on who we are not. It’s time to be proud of who we are.”

Mr Cole-Hamilton will also confirm the party’s first 150 Rising action weekend will be held next month.

The conference, which was delayed following the Queen’s death on 8 September, is the party’s first in-person gathering since 2019.

It is also Mr Cole-Hamilton’s first as leader, after he succeeded Willie Rennie.

On Friday, he told BBC Radio’s Good Morning Scotland programme that the party was meeting “in great heart”.

Mr Cole-Hamilton added: “We come off the back of amazing council election results, when all the pundits had kind of written us off as an afterthought we actually outperformed every other opposition party.

“We put a third of our councillors on to our total.”

Mr Cole-Hamilton explained his claim was based on winning 20 seats more than the party’s 2017 total of 67.

He told the programme: “We are really encouraged by what we have seen.

“I personally went round the country, energising campaigns locally, meeting new candidates.

“And everywhere I went we were smashing it.”

Mr Cole-Hamilton said the party was also focussed on preparing for the next Scottish and UK elections and would fight both with “gusto and confidence that we will grow again”.

He added: “We believe there is no mandate for Rishi Sunak in Westminster and, as such, for democratic hygiene we need to take this back to the people.”

The next general election is not due to take place until January 2025 at the latest, after the Conservatives won a landslide majority in 2019.

Mr Sunak, who was appointed prime minister on Tuesday, is under no obligation to call an early election under the UK’s parliamentary political system.

Mr Cole-Hamilton also criticised SNP plans to make the next general election a “de facto referendum” on independence if the UK Supreme Court decides a poll cannot take place on the first minister’s desired date of 19 October next year.

He said: “I think it is incredibly arrogant of any politician to tell the public that one election is about their particular issue.

“It’s the people who get to decide what a general election is about.”

Ms Sturgeon called for another referendum – “indyref2” – immediately after the UK as a whole voted to leave the EU in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Scottish voters backed remain by 62% by 38%.

The SNP currently has a pro-independence majority in the devolved parliament alongside the Scottish Greens.

It argues that its electoral success – coupled with the Brexit vote – mean it has a “cast-iron mandate” to hold another referendum.